USCB Daily Diary: Weldon Smith

The University of South Carolina Beaufort baseball team is playing in its first NAIA World Series. While they compete in Lewiston, Idaho, the Sand Sharks are sharing their experiences with Bluffton Today through a daily diary.

Friday, we heard from infielder Weldon Smith following USCB's heartbreaking loss to Rogers State in its World Series opener. Smith is a senior from Beaufort.

LEWISTON, Idaho — I've enjoyed every minute of being here for the Avista-NAIA World Series. It's honestly an experience that I'll remember for the rest of my life. Getting here was tough — we had to take a bus to Atlanta and fly to Denver and then Spokane, and we still had a two-hour bus ride from Spokane to Lewiston — but I think that kind of made it exciting, too.

Once we got here, we saw why the tournament has been here so long. The fan support here is unbelievable — I can't believe there are this many people at the games. The area is great and the people around town are so nice. Everywhere you go around town, they come up to you and tell you they're pulling for you and hope you're having a great time.

We played our first game today, and there were a lot of jitters and a lot of excitement at the beginning, but once we got out there, we knew it was just another ballgame.

We knew what we had to do to win — we had to get some hits and score some runs for Michael Heesch. He did a great job and threw a great game, but we just didn't score enough runs for him, and we lost 3-2 to Rogers State.

Now we have to win them all, but we've been here before. We lost our first game in the Opening Round at home, and we had to win five straight games to get here. I think I aged a couple years going through that.

Honestly, it's all become a blur, because we played so many games in so few days to get here. But I can honestly say I don't think I would rather do it any other way, because that was so much fun.

Every team here is just as good as us, and we're just as good as them. Anybody can win on any given day; it just depends on who is hot.